An RN is introduced during the evolution of a long term evolution (long term evolution, LTE) system. An RN accesses a network through a base station. The base station is called a host base station of the RN. A link between a base station and a user equipment (user equipment, UE) is divided into a relay link between a base station and an RN and an access link between an RN and a UE.
A relay is classified into an in band relay (in band relay) and an out band relay (out band relay) according to whether a relay link and an access link use the same frequency resource. For an in band relay, according to RN capability, if an RN cannot simultaneously implement receiving and transmitting on a relay link and an access link, the RN is a half duplex relay (half duplex relay). During transmission of a half duplex relay, the relay link from the base station to the RN and the access link from the RN to the UE multiplex the same downlink frequency in time division mode, and the access link from the UE to the RN and the relay link from the RN to the base station multiplex the same uplink frequency in time division mode. For a half duplex relay, some subframes used for relay link transmission are allocated in time division multiplexing mode. These subframes are called RN subframes. Subframes used for access link transmission are called access link subframes. For a half duplex relay, RN subframe configuration (RN subframe configuration) is implemented when an RN is accessing the network. RN subframe configuration is performed to configure an RN subframe used for relay link transmission.
In an LTE system network, a carrier aggregation (carrier aggregation, CA) technique is introduced. That is, a base station may simultaneously communicate with a UE on a plurality of carriers. Each carrier performing carrier aggregation is called a component carrier (component carrier, CC).
In the prior art, when CA and RN are deployed in an LTE system in an integrated manner, that is, a base station may simultaneously communicate with an RN on a plurality of carriers, the prior art cannot effectively configure an RN subframe in a CA scenario.